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Monday, July 19, 2010

Book Suggestion: The Second Jurassic Dinosaur Rush

My friend Paul Brinkman has a new book out that I encourage everyone to check out – The Second Jurassic Dinosaur Rush: Museums; Paleontology in America at the Turn of the Twentieth Century. It is available on Amazon.com from University of Chicago Press (preview here on Google Books). I have not had a chance to finish the book yet, but I am really enjoying reading it so far! It covers some of the local paleontology that took place in my area of western Colorado back in the early 1900’s when Elmer Riggs of the Chicago Field Museum was excavating the worlds first Brachiosaurus here in Grand Junction. He later also collected a partial Apatosaurus specimen from Dinosaur Hill in Fruita, just down the road from the museum where I work. The Brachiosaurus site is now on property owned by the museum (“Riggs Hill”) and is an island of Morrison Formation lost in a sea of subdivisions. I wonder if Riggs would still recognize the area today. The Dinosaur Hill area is still relatively undeveloped (especially compared to Riggs Hill) and the museum maintains a trail here that we co-manage with our local BLM office. Paul’s book is giving a great background on Riggs, along with work that took place post Marsh & Cope for big east coast museum. I suggest that anyone who is interested in paleo history check out this book, especially if you are curious about many of the immense, classic dinosaurs that you see on display in the old, big museums of the east. If I get a chance when I finish the book I will post a better review of its contents.